The Pirate Bay has welcomed several moderators back on board. After initial security issues were resolved site staff have now regained access to the backend. The moderators got to work right away and have already removed hundreds of fake torrents in an effort to restore the site to its former glory.

The Pirate Bay has been back online for three weeks now and most of the site’s former users have found their way back.

While the notorious torrent site appeared to function normally, things were pretty hectic behind the scenes.

TPB had to switch hosting providers on several occasions after being kicked out following copyright complaints. At the same time, scammers were populating the site with fake torrents and scammy comments.

Since TPB decided to restart without a moderator crew for security reasons, most fake torrents remained online for days, driving downloaders to malware and other malicious content.

Locking out the moderators initially led to mutiny among the staff and concerns among users, but this week several long-time moderators came back on board.

Close to a dozen moderators now have access to the site again and they started cleaning up the place right away. Spammer accounts were banned and hundreds of fake files have already been deleted.

“I don’t know how many torrents have been removed so far, but it is in the hundreds. Some fakers had eight or nine pages under their account,” TPB moderator Agricola tells TF.

The moderators describe the site as a “crap heap” and there’s still plenty of work to be done. However, for security reasons, no new “helpers” will be allowed to join.

“No new staff will be recruited, so the helper status will be gone. The staff will only consist of moderators,” Agricola says.

For the time being no new accounts can be registered, which makes the clean up a little easier. Spammers will have to use old existing accounts and these will become harder to find.

Earlier this week TPB operator Winston told us that registrations will eventually be opened as well, but not before everything else is running smoothly.

With the moderators back on board the site will slowly and steadily return to what it was before the raid, marking the end of some of the most challenging weeks in the site’s history.